September 16, 2018

Denying Confederate Racism Perpetuates Racism Today

By Glenn

“The Myth of the Kindly General Lee: The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.”
Adam Serwer, Jun 4, 2017

As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. “Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged ‘the same as white soldiers.’” Lee’s response was that “negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.” Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that blacks could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that “Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers.” Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lee’s surrender.

The United States of America viewed African Americans as persons. The Confederates viewed them as property. I am proud to live in Modern America.

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